Cellular materials have varied applications and are useful in many industries including aerospace, automotive, packaging, construction, and other industries. A common type of cellular materials is foamed plastics.
A common technique for producing cellular materials creates gas cells inside a plastic material before the plastic material is solidified. Typical known foaming techniques involve the use of a blowing agent which creates gas cells inside the material during the material manufacture process; and the foamed material is then subjected to a forming process such as a thermoforming process to obtain the desired product shape.
A further cellular material formation technique is disclosed in PCT Publication WO 2012/162784, the contents of which are incorporated herein by reference. As disclosed, a material with a cellular structure is formed from melt-stretched materials such as plastic granules. The melt stretchable material is compressed between stretching surfaces and is melted to form viscous molten layers attaching the material to the surfaces. Melted central portions of the material are stretched by moving the surfaces away from one another. A cellular structure is thus formed between.
The resulting structure has generally randomly sized, shaped, distributed and positioned cells. Further controlling one or more of size, shape, distribution and position of cells would be desirable.